In the Footprints of the Padres

hand; one of those dear old brick blockhouses that were formidable in their day, but now are as houses

pretty enough in the sunshine,-and thereabout is Drake's Bay. Behind us, dimly outlined on the horizon, the Farallones lie faintly blue, like exquisite cloud-islands. The north shore of the entrance to the Bay

s; a lorner or lonelier spot it were impossible to picture. There were no trees there, no shrubs; nothing but grass, that was green enough in the rainy winter season but as yellow as straw in the drouth of the long su

aph Hill, we saw all the city front, and it was not much to see: a few wooden wharves crowded with shipping and backed by a row of one or two-story frame buildings perched upon piles. The harbor in front of the city-more like an open roads

r we soon recognized our father in the waiting, welcoming throng. But there were many whose disappointment was bitter indeed when they learned that their loved ones were not on board. Often a ship brought letters instead of the expected wife and family; for at the last momen

t was built of brick that was probably shipped around Cape Horn. California houses, such as they were, used to come from very distant parts of the globe in the early Fifties; some of them were

t and a grocery on the ground-floor. That grocery was like a country store: one could get anything there; and from the balcony above there was a wonderful view. Indeed that was one of the jumping-off places; for a steep stairway led down the

not be called a playground, for there was no ground visible. It was a platform of wood heavily timbered beneath and fenced in; from the front of it one might have

hem chase, especially of a holiday. The Hill was crowned by a shanty that had seen its best days. It had been the lookout from the time when the Forty-Niners began to watch for fresh arrivals. From the observatory on its roof-a primitive affair-all ships w

height. The rocks had been blasted from their bases to make room for a steadily increasing commerce, and the débris was shipped away as balla

ble expanse from tiny balconies as delicate and dainty as toys. Their garden-plots were set on end; they must needs adapt themselves to the angle of demarkation; they loomed above their front-yards while their back-yards lorded it over their roofs. Indeed they were usually approached by ascending or descending stairways, or perchance by airy bridges

always envied them. I was sorry that we were housed like other folk, and fronted on a street than which nothing could have been more commonplace or less interesting. Its one redeeming featu

inded. He was a Yorkshire man, and he cried with a loud voice his appetizing wares: "Cabbage, taters, onions, wild duck, wild goose!" Well do I remember the refra

sure they were not a few. The markets of California, in early times, were stocked with canned goods. Flour came to us in large cans; probably the barrel would not have been proof against mould durin

rows-it was pretty hot work melting the solder out of the old cans and moulding it in little pig-leads of our own invention,-we could do as we pleased and no questions asked. Oh, it was a joy past words,-the kindling of the furnace fires, the adjusting of the cans, the watching for the first movement of

ast us long. The smallest coin in circulation was a dime. No one would accept a five-cent piece. As for coppers, they are scarc

dime, we gave a quarter of a dollar and received in change a dime; we thus paid fifty per cent more for the article than we should have done if we had given a dime for it. But that made no difference: a quarter called for two bits' worth o

Oaklan

re, and they went to feast their eyes upon one of the loveliest of landscapes or waterscapes. They probably took their lunch with them, and their families-if they had them; though families were infrequent in the Fifties. They wandered about until th

ong as the old Hill stands. From the heights his eye sweeps a scene of beauty. There is the Golden Gate, bathed in sunset glories; and there the northern shore line that climbs skyward where Mount Tamalpais takes on his mantle of mist. There is Saucelito, with its green terraces resting upon the

f harboring all the fleets of all the civilized or uncivilized worlds! The northern part of it, beyond the narrows, is known as the Bay of S

Coast Range; and atop of all and beyond all Mount Diablo, with its three thousand eight hundred feet of perpendicularity, beyond whose summit t